1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a tabulation system for questions from personal computer purchasers, etc., and more particularly, to a tabulation processing apparatus, tabulation processing method, computer readable recording medium having a tabulation processing program, and tabulation processing system that tabulate and display the questions depending on an elapsed period.
2. Description of the Related Art
With regard to questions about operations, problems, etc. from personal computer purchasers, etc., a system has been provided for accepting the questions at a call center established by a manufacturer and presenting coping methods corresponding to the questions from the call center.
With regard to such a question process, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-186977 discloses a call acceptance system that includes a server for registering question examples and answer examples prepared in advance to a database to display noteworthy information on a display apparatus of an operator terminal through this server. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-136858 is related to pet ownership and discloses a guidance system where a purchaser is provided with CD-ROM storing computer software for network connection and pet-raising guidance software to obtain answers for questions about know-how necessary for raising pets, growth states, problem occurrences, etc. through the medium of this CD-ROM over the Internet.
By the way, since questions from customers include wide variety of topics, responding individually to each question is not necessarily an optimum service. From such a viewpoint, the questions are categorized by content to tabulate and, for example, top 10 questions are published on a call center site in a ranking format. The customers can check the contents on the computer through the Internet and, for example, as shown in FIG. 20, in question ranking display, “frequently asked questions” are displayed with display items of:
“1. I cannot write into DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW.. . . Please teach me how to deal with the problem.2. Teach me about user registration.. . . Please teach me about registration.. . . . . .10. . . . . . . ”, etc.
When generating such a ranking format, for example, as shown in FIG. 21: all the questions from the customers for a month are collected from a question log recording the questions to create a question list (step S101); higher orders of the question list are analyzed to create a higher-order list (step S102); the higher-order list of the questions is correlated with Q&A contents (step S103); the Q&A contents corresponding to the higher-order list are correlated with a ranking table (step S104); and this ranking table is displayed as top 10 questions of that month, for example, on a Q&A navi (step S105).
FIG. 22 shows a chart of this procedure. In this case, in a timer series of one month, two months, three months, and four months after a marketing period announcement, 502 is a customer group of initial purchase; 504 is the process thereof; 506 is a customer group of one-month delayed purchase; 508 is a process after two months; 410 is a customer group of two-month delayed purchase; and 512, 514, and 516 are top 10 ranking display after three months. In the process 508, a tabulation process is performed for totalizing the customer groups 502, 506.
In such tabulation and display forms, questions immediately after the purchase and questions after a time has elapsed from the purchase are mixed in the same ranking and, in FIG. 22, the customer group of initial purchase 502 and the customer group of one-month delayed purchase 506 are added, analyzed, and tabulated with no distinction in the analysis and tabulation after two months. That is, although question contents are varied between the customers immediately after purchase and the customer after a time has elapsed from the purchase depending on the elapsed time and the learning level, if such factors are not reflected in the ranking display, it is disadvantageous for some customers that their questions are out of the ranking and expected information cannot be acquired. It is also disadvantageous that some customer may feel uneasy because their question contents are considerably different from the ranking.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication Nos. 2003-186977 and 2001-136858 do not disclose or indicate such problems and do not disclose or include means for solving the problems.